Arab Spring top news story of 2011: Postmedia survey

Postmedia News12.30.2011

A Tunisian demonstrator prepares to throw a rock during clashes with security forces in Regueb, near Sidi Bouzid on January 10, 2011. The Arab Spring overwhelmingly topped the list of significant international news stories for 2011 in a survey of Postmedia Network senior editors.

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The Arab Spring — ranging from the massive demonstrations in Cairo's Tahrir Square to the overthrow of Libya's Moammar Gadhafi — overwhelmingly topped the list of significant international news stories for 2011 in a survey of Postmedia Network senior editors.

In Canada, the editors chose the May 2 federal election as their top story of the year, followed by the Vancouver riots that broke out June 15 after that city lost Game 7 of the Stanley Cup final to the Boston Bruins.

Doug Beazley, news editor at Postmedia News in Ottawa, agreed: "The Arab Spring has proved once again that a well-informed public, hungry for freedom, can only be held in check by the most savage forms of repression — and not for very long."

"The turmoil is immense, so are the ramifications," added Mick Higgins, foreign editor at the National Post.

The death of Osama bin Laden was also chosen by several editors. "He stayed in the shadows throughout the year, as he had for a decade — but his death was the quintessential bookend to a decade that changed all our lives," noted Postmedia News political bureau chief Mark Kennedy.

"The world has been a very different place since he masterminded the Sept. 11 attacks, and regardless of the progress made in Afghanistan and Iraq, removing the embodiment of terrorism was a key victory in the war on terror," said Thomas Bink, director of digital services for Postmedia. "It's too much to say the world is a safer place following his death, but it definitely indicates that we will fight back."

Among the events that defined Canada this year, Peter Robb, deputy editor, news, of the Ottawa Citizen chose the federal election as a "transformational moment" because it "decimated the Liberal party, elected a Conservative majority and raised up the NDP as the Official Opposition."

"Years of Commons status quo were swept out the door as a Blue Wave and Orange Crush combined to all but shatter the Liberal and Bloc Quebecois parties and give Stephen Harper his coveted mandate," said Postmedia world editor Alan Kors.

Many editors felt passionately about the impact the Vancouver hockey riots had both locally and on the country. Fabian Dawson, deputy editor of The Province, noted that "after an immensely successful Olympics, Vancouver was shamed by the rioters and lack of readiness by police."

The riots "shocked Canadians, who were certain we were different from, morally superior to, Brits and Americans," said Ottawa Citizen managing editor Andrew Potter.

The visit to Canada of Prince William and Kate (the Duke and Duchess of Cambridge), topped the year for Harvey at the Herald. "Canada's future king and queen reinvigorated Canada's latent support of the monarchy, and debate about the usefulness of that musty institution," he said.

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